Is your preferred method of grading to allocate more-or-less fixed percentages of scores to each letter grade? (e.g., A = top 10%, etc.) Under that system, how would graduate and professional schools set their admissions policies? (It's a given that their rankings depend in part on the undergraduate GPAs of the students they enroll.)

IOW, how would you establish the "exchange rate" between a Berkeley C and a SF State A?

As the holder of a MS in education from a well respected school of education I can speak to this.

Schools of education of entirely free of any pretense of educating their attendees. They are totally content free.

I managed to make it all the way through without taking a single test, quiz, exam or anything like

In one class we had to come up with a game for the students to play that would, supposedly, teach them something. Out of about 15 students, I was the only one who did not come up with a variation on Wheel of Fortune.

I believe I was also the only one who got a B on that assignment.

The main thing I learned in that 2 years was that American schools are in remarkably good shape considering the way we educate teachers.

Yes, I know how awful the system is. I am simply surprised it is not even worse.

The data clearly shows that students in STEM courses at Madison receive markedly lower grades than students in education courses.

So what? Education majors and STEM majors don't compete against each other for jobs, scholarships, grant money or...pretty much anything. For all intents and purposes, they went to two different schools.

It's been 45 years now, but I still vividly remember my shock discovering that in the same semester I took thermodynamics and partial differential equations my sister had Fairy Tales II and Bulletin Board Arranging.

Part of the shock was learning that an elementary ed major needed two semesters to cover fairy tales.

I had to hire a bunch of people back in 1988 and so I received and read at hundreds of resumes. I [whose GPA was 2.6 as a night school grad at a commuter school in 1977] was shocked at how many applicants had 3.5 and higher,dean lists etc.

We had such a hiring need, we did "drive by" interviews. Was the person alive, available and likely to stay for a while? If so, they were hired.

The best kid I ever hired was a college student who became an actuary. She was smart- worked for us for four years during summers and part-time during the school year. The next smartest was a high school grad and Army vet. He went on to be a computer network expert.

Master's grades are another ball game. Most of the students I knew were getting a master's in Ed. to get a raise; if this were discontinued and merit substituted as criteria for that raise, enrollment at many grad schools would collapse. So the grades are soft, so to speak.

I have to agree with insty--it seems like this house of cards is just going to blow away one day soon.

It matters, not because Ed majors are likely to compete directly with Engineering majors, but because the American Ed School system keeps recruiting academically weak college students who go on to dumb down public K-12.

We are talking about the fact that Engineering majors get lower grades than Education majors. If colleges decide to grade Education majors more stringently, they still won't be as smart as the Engineering majors - in fact, it won't make any difference at all. Why would it?

The problem is of course in the education field where an outstanding grad gets the same grades as a mediocre one - they both get 4.0s. So you can't pick out the best teachers, and with tenure, you're stuck with them when you do find out you picked the wrong ones.

The data clearly shows that students in STEM courses at Madison receive markedly lower grades than students in education courses.

When engineers and scientists get real-life problems wrong companies go out of business and/or people die. Education and communications professors just don't have the same level of responsibility as professors of nuclear or civil engineering.

When I was an undergrad all six nuclear engineering seniors flunked a class they needed for graduation. They'd had a bad lecturer the previous year and didn't have a solid background for the current class. The department head owned up to the problem and apologized profusely. But he still wouldn't let them through. "You people will be designing nuclear power plants," he said. "We realize this is a terrible inconvenience, but we can't allow you to graduate until you understand this."

A co-worker and I submitted a proposal to a conference examining the average grade distributions within our institution. We had found that the lowest ACT score and the highest GPAs were in the school of Education, and the reverse in the school of Science & Health.

Two of the reviewers liked it, the third objected that it was picking on education. I was not amused.

BTW, the website, gradeinlfation.com,has an excellent look at grade inflation in general.

Reminds me of a couple of my Dad's favorite jokes.(He was a 1966 GT grad in aerospace eng MS 1970 AFIT)1. What does a Bulldog call a Jacket a year after graduation?...BOSS. 2. Called him up when I was a nuke student at Florida and my sister was about to go to GA.asked him "How are you letting her go to Athens?"His answer"do you really think she can pass freshman calculus?" Sent us both ROFL.She was a journalism major.